And that was the beginning of a most extraordinary phase of Brigit
Mead's life.
For the next four months she saw Joyselle almost daily. She never
broached the subject of her engagement being broken, its permanence was
taken for granted by everyone, and Tommy's indefinitely prolonged visit
to Golden Square would, if anything more than the fact of her engagement
had been necessary, have explained her constant presence there.
Once Théo had urged her to set their wedding-day, but she had put him
off and he had never again opened the question. That the young man was
not, could not possibly be, perfectly satisfied with the state of
affairs, she knew very well, but that, she told herself, she could not
help.
She lived on from day to day, more simply and with less self-analysis,
in spite of her curious position, than ever before in her life, for the
inevitable day of reckoning seemed to be the affair of the Brigit of the
future, whereas the Brigit of each day was concerned only with those
particular twenty-four hours. It was enough to live in close
companionship with the man she loved, and when, as occasionally she
tried to do, she reasoned to herself about it, her mind seemed paralysed
and utterly refused to make plans of any kind. So, twisting to her own
purposes, as people do, the saying about the evil of the day being unto
itself sufficient, she let time slip away unremarked and spring came.
It was a cold rainy season that year, with chill dark mornings and
flickerings of pale sunshine later on.
People talked much about the weather, and pretty women shivered in their
light finery. Tommy, who went home for a fortnight in April, reported
that things in the country were deplorable.
"Everyone has colds, and Mr. Smith says there is diphtheria at Spinny
Major. Green is disgusted, and from what I can gather from his cheery
reports, everyone is going to be ruined by agricultural depression. The
Mother of Hundreds has nine new pups--rather good ones."
This was at the end of April, and Lord Kingsmead was coiled in a big
chair in his sister's room in Pont Street. Mr. Babington, his tutor, had
just gone for a walk, poor man. Tommy's attitude to him had from the
first been one of polite tolerance, and Mr. Babington's bump of humour
being imperfectly developed, he in return regarded his charge with
something like horror.
A boy of twelve, who knew only the very first principles of Latin (Mr.
Babington was number three, the other two having proved unsatisfactory
to their employer-pupil), and knew the multiplication table only up to
"eight-times," disturbed his tidy little mind. There was, moreover, a
youth in Sydenham who clamoured for Mr. Babington, and who was after
that much-tried young Oxonian's heart. But Mr. Babington stayed on,
for--there was Brigit, and in the evenings the tutor locked his door,
smoked asthma cigarettes, and wrote sonnets by the yard to the
Enchantress.
Tommy, of course, had at once perceived the first shoots of the hapless
young man's baby passion as it sprang up in his heart--which did not
make it easier to bear, but still Mr. Babington stayed on.
"He'll never go, Bick," complained Tommy that afternoon, after his
remarks on Kingsmead. "I even tried smoking the other day, but he had a
handkerchief of yours that you left on the hall table, and was so bucked
that he barely noticed my iniquity. He _is_ a poisonous person!"
"Yes, I certainly preferred Mr. Catt--but you didn't like him either."
"How could anyone like a fellow named Catt? I nearly choked every time I
had to speak to him, and so did the Master." It was thus that the boy
designated and addressed Joyselle. "He used to call him Minet. I have
learned that rotten old multiplication-table, however, and Latin is
easy. I do wish," he went on, gnawing at an ancient bit of almond-rock
that he had acquired at the village sweetstuff shop at home, "that
mother had had me well whacked when I was a kid. It would have saved me
no end of trouble now."
Brigit laughed as she dabbed some cherry-coloured grease on her pointed
nails. "Poor old Tommy!"
The almond-rock was an impediment to fluency of conversation, but after
a moment Tommy mastered it and went on. "I say, Bicky, what's gone wrong
with Carron?"